Love Like Water
by Tsadde
Summary: Castiel's finally returned from Purgatory, tired and weary. Exhausted, the night culminates with the most basic of things- bathing the stains of Purgatory off of his skin and ridding himself of the clothes marked by his constant run for his life. But Dean knows how a year in combat cripples a person- helping him bathe, the two find the closure in clear water and warm arms. One-shot


Love Like Water

by Tsadde

* * *

It takes a long while before Castiel starts to ease into his touch, and Dean tries his best to swallow the lump in his throat and pretend he doesn't notice how things have changed. A year of warfare is enough to harden you, to deform, twist and chill you down to the very marrow of your bones, and touch becomes so frightening when it's not followed by the ripping of flesh or the spilling of blood. Dean understands, though he wishes he didn't, though he wishes even more that he didn't have to see all his mannerisms so perfectly reflected in Cas. It takes a long while, but he fills the quiet with humming and light conversation about all the things they'll do now, all the meals they'll share, all the movies they need to watch and states they need to visit, and all the clothes they'll have to wash now that Cas will be borrowing from him. The words are spoken lightly, mock-happily, but like the glimmer in Cas' eyes, there's a bittersweet sort of sorrow behind every word.

Eventually, the string of words become promises of things to come, and that relaxes Castiel- the idea of a forced tomorrow. So he melts into the touch of Dean's hands against the nape of his bare neck, and the way his palms massage the dirt out of his hair. They rub against his skull roughly, but he relishes in the touch. He quickly loves the way Dean seems to sense where all the bruises are, and how his hands always trace around them, phantom over the cuts and the swelling, until the dark strands are clean and soft again. He sighs happily when the hands run down his crown and onto his neck, and hums with joy when the palms dig into the stress hiding beneath the skin and the muscles of his neck and collar. When they scrub at his face, along his jaw, over the bumps and ridges of his collarbone. The joy of it all, of the passing of hands, the running of water, the cloth covered in suds that shyly makes its way down his spine and back again, is enough to make his eyes water, his body shudder, his mouth want to quiver and fall. With Dean sitting behind in the tub, almost as undressed as he is, Castiel feels like a budding child, a hapless elder, and a needy adolescent all at once. Babied, that is, but so befuddled by the sheer maturity of the situation- coddled by Dean all once, but so resounding of aged and earnest love, that he knows the correspondence is that of souls far older than their collected years suggest.

Because this could have gone so many ways for Castiel, Dean was kind. He could've been ridiculed or teased, or left, with the best intentions, to figure out how baths and showers work on his own. But Dean knows things Sam never will, and the day of arrival is too soon for learning new and terrible things, or being reminded of what's been lost. This could have gone down a thousand different ways, with a thousand different sorts of failure, but Dean was kind and Sam understanding. And when helping him on the sidelines, waiting outside the shower curtains, didn't work, Dean fucked it all under his breath, jokingly, and stripped down at much as he deemed fit before jumping in. So, never-minding the fears, misconceptions, or the drenched clothes that, Dean later decides, is better left in a heap on the floor, Dean helps him into the tub and fills it up with warm water. And sitting close behind him, Dean washes the dirt out of his hair, caresses the bloodstains off his skin, and makes sure to pay careful and delicate attention to washing each open gash that could ever threaten to infect. Somewhere in that transcendence, Dean is daunted by how far, how deeply, his love for Cas runs in his blood, his spirit, in each slow and languid movement his body so naturally makes. Wrapping his arms about him, suddenly, Dean is terrified of how thin and frail the angel is in his grip. Angels do not need to eat, he knows, but Purgatory starved him. He pulls him in close, taking in the feel of his back against his chest, and he crowns his head with kisses.

"I missed you, Cas," he admits slowly and truthfully. Castiel shivers at the sincerity in his voice. "God, I've missed you so much. Never again, you hear me? _Never again_."

And its there, in the water and Dean's arms, that Castiel is overcome by the devotion in his touch, in the smell and feel of him. In that solemn embrace, with the sound of the trailing kisses echoing against the cloudy water, with the feeling of his mouth pressing love over the pathway of skin behind his ears, down to his neck. There and then, he falls in love with Dean all over again. So the angel, unthinkingly, only feeling, brings his watery hands up to his face, covering the quivering frown, covering the watering eyes, and crumbles.

And it's then, listening to the muffled sobs, that Dean forgets about the soap, the stains, and the blood that inks the water. It's then and there, in that silence, that he presses into Castiel, naked and shaking, and coos him into falling even further. Not wanting to see Castiel come undone, not enjoying the way the sight of him in fragments tears him apart, but sacrificing himself to know that, after this moment of raw, brutal pain, the healing will begin. Stroking his hair, whispering into his skin, trailing the curve of his back of his jaw with devoted kisses, he compels Cas to cry, to cling onto him even tighter and let the pain run down the drain like the stream of opaque water.

Castiel turns over to him and in the crampness of the tub, and the shift is awkward, daunting, so very much _like_him- all tangled limbs, slipping hands, and swoshing water. But they settle with the scant space, completely overwhelmed with each other. They mold into the position, muscles relaxing, hearts racing all the while. So now holding Dean's face in his worn hands, Cas tries to memorize the glory in his eyes as long as he can manage, before nature compels him to close his own and inch forward with painful and terrifying delicacy. Some things, he knows, are best experienced blindly. So, slowly, carefully, they wade into the first kiss of many, noses touching, scarce beath shared. And everything, then, has been shattered, birthed, halted, propelled.

Years ago, Castiel held the torn pieces of Dean Winchester in his hands and had sewn him back together again. After hell, he remade Dean Winchester in fire, and, here, after Purgatory, Dean remakes Castiel with the running of living water.


End file.
